It’s beach season, and Winter Stations have returned to Woodbine Beach for the month of March.
The international design competition asks participants to design temporary art installations that incorporate the existing lifeguard towers along Toronto’s Kew and Woodbine beaches.
The theme of this year’s Winter Stations is resilience, chosen to allow international artists to address the many challenges and changes we have all faced throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. All installations are open to the public and free.
One Canada
University of Guelph, School of Environmental Design & Rural Development (Canada)
The One Canada installation acknowledges the resilience of First Nations peoples and seeks to bring Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians together through gathering. The seven rings represent the seven grandfather teachings of the Anishnabae Peoples: Wisdom, Love, Respect, Bravery, Honesty, Humility, and Truth.
ENTER FACE
MELT – Cemre Önertürk & Ege Çakır (Turkey)
Seeking to explore the role screens played in creating an isolated version of coexistence many of us faced throughout the pandemic, ENTER FACE invites guests to literally enter their faces into the exhibit to view a distorted version the real world around them.
Introspection
University of Toronto John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design (Canada)
As if you hadn’t already had enough time to look at yourself during every Zoom meeting for the last two years (it’s okay, admit it, we’re all doing it), Introspection offers the chance to do more of that, just in a tiny box on a beach instead of a tiny box in your house.
THE HIVE
Kathleen Dogantzis & Will Cuthbert (Canada)
We are resilient, bees are resilient, protect THE HIVE, save the bees, we are bees.
S’winter Station
University X Department of Architectural Science (Canada)
Designed as a shelter from winter conditions as well as a place where the community can gather to enjoy them, the S’Winter Station pavilion offers multiple approaches as an installation. Looking inside or outside from a concrete hole, or atop the lifeguard tower in the centre, gives a unique view of the beach dependent on the time, day and weather conditions.
While you’re at Woodbine Beach, make sure to walk over to Ashbridges Bay Park and check out the Red Embers installation, which honours the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA, with 13 large-scale banners. It was moved there from Allan Gardens in 2020.
Winter Stations continues at Woodbine Beach until March 31
